By the Light of the Silvery Moon

We’ve had great moonlight for the past couple of nights, with the full moon yesterday, January 26th. I took the opportunity to take a few pictures last night and again this evening. Last evening, I went to Quarry Lake Park to gain an unobstructed view of the mountains on the south side of the valley. The moon rose on the north side of the valley, shining directly on the mountains I was shooting. It’s an impressive sight, the glow of the moon reflected by the snow on the peaks. Here’s my first picture  featuring (from left to right), Ship’sProw, Canmore Wall, Mount Lawrence Grassi, Miner’s Peak and Ha Ling Peak. Except for the darkness of the shadows you could almost believe this picture was taken in daylight.

It was a little cold, so after getting a few shots I retreated home. Later in the evening, I took some more from the rear deck of our house. It’s much the same view, except the pictures include a view of the neighbourhood. The one I’ve included from this group of pictures features the East End of Mt Rundle (known locally as EEOR). Again the moonlight is coming from behind, illuminating the mountain and the snow in the foreground. You can also see Ha Ling Peak on the left side of the image and the Fairholme Range, stretching down the valley on the right.

Today’s final picture was taken earlier this evening. I went out front of the house and waited for the moon to peek over Grotto Mountain, across the valley. I succeeded in capturing the moon as it emerged from behind the mountain but I was unable to get a clear, sharp picture of the moon itself with the wispy cloud in front of it. (I did create another version of this picture, inserting a clear, sharp moon photographed on another occasion. I chose this one because I like it better and of course, to use the other would be cheating.)

For those interested in the technique involved in taking these photographs, please read on. Otherwise, you’re done.

Winter night photography is a lot of fun but does pose its unique challenges, for obvious reasons; the dark and the cold to name two.

The first challenge is to get the right exposure. Although parts of the image can be very bright, the overall level of ambient light is very low and it requires a long exposure to get the picture. In the case of these three shots, the exposures ranged from 1 min. and 40 sec. to 2 min. and 40 sec. I kept the ISO fairly low at 200 to avoid any problems with noise and varied the aperture between f5 and f14. The camera is in a manual mode, using the “bulb exposure” setting. The shutter is opened manually and locked open using an electronic cable release. The shutter is then closed manually when you believe you have enough exposure. This requires a little trial and error to find the approximate time required. Within a couple of shots you can get what you want. The duration of the exposure need not be precise because everything happens quite slowly in low light. A few seconds longer or shorter makes an imperceptible difference.

A second challenge is getting the camera to focus in the dark. Sometimes, auto-focus simply won’t work, as was the case on the last two evenings. I resorted to manual focus which is also difficult because it’s hard to see the quality of focus in the view finder and even more difficult to see it on the preview screen on the back of the camera. Because I was focusing on distant objects, I began with the focal distance set at infinity and again through trial and error, made adjustments to get it perfect. Unlike with exposure, this requires precision.

The final challenge is obvious. It takes time to do all this and the fingers can get quite cold. At least you can put your gloves one while awaiting the exposure to complete.